Following up the rather awesome Cycles, this six-track EP shows the grumpy Finnish grinders at their best. Those in the know will doubtless recognise the intent behind the artwork, and indeed Napalm is as much a tribute to everyone’s favourite band Napalm Death as it is a showcase for the band. Three original tracks and three covers fill the eleven or so minutes here, and it’s the sort of release that will have you headbanging mercilessly for the full running time. The retail version comes with a live DVD, but the sheer venom and fury contained in the tracks themselves make it more than worthwhile for them alone. It’s worth pointing out that Rotten Sound have been in the business of grind since 1993, and like any well-established corporation they’ve become skilled at ravaging their surroundings, albeit in a completely different way! The only toxic spills that these Finns deal in are aural; powerful, sludgy riffs that tear and rip at your ears until you’re begging for mercy – yet will mercy come? Napalm is as powerful a statement of intent as its revered namesake, respectful of its predecessor’s path and willing to walk a different path that leads to the same destination – pure sonic destruction.

That sums this EP up well. Six tracks, the longest over three minutes, the shortest under thirty seconds. Rotten Sound’s half of the songs are intense and powerful torrents of grunt n’blast that verge on the epic, both Mindkill and Dead Remains causing serious neck damage and Brainlord upping the extremity so that all you can do is stand transfixed in the band’s powerful windtunnel. The covers, meanwhile, Rotten Sounding versions of Missing Link, The Kill, and Suffer The Children, are exactly as brilliant as you’d expect, and with such quality source material it would have been pretty hard for the band to mess things up. Not that I was expecting a disaster from a band as good as Rotten Sound; they’ve truly inherited Nasum’s mantle as THE quality grindcore band of the decade, and given slabs of pure molten grind like this, they’ll keep us listening for a long time to come.